British actress, who became a star in the Gainsborough
melodramas of the 1940s. Previously she had played an effective lead
to George Formby in Let
George Do It! (1940), and had worked with Carol
Reed on Kipps
(1941) and The
Young Mr Pitt (1942), but it was The
Man in Grey (1943) which brought wide popular appeal.
Typecast as the virtuous victim, and caught between Margaret
Lockwood's scheming, James Mason's cruelty
and Stewart Granger's swashbuckling, Calvert
was able to make virtue interesting, and, in Fanny
by Gaslight (1944) in particular, there is nothing insipid about
her femininity. By the 1950s she was playing more varied dramatic parts,
with her performance as the mother in Mandy
(1952) her most satisfying role.
